District Administration – Victoria Clayton
“Let’s start with this: In teaching phonics, phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in the English language, such as the sound the letter “A” makes or the sound of the “sh” in “share.” A grapheme is simply a way of writing a phoneme. That’s enough vocab for now because this is what you really need to know: these have been fighting words. You’ve heard the phrase “reading wars”—the so-called battle between teaching phonics and whole language instruction—but you might not know that reports of the battle are greatly exaggerated.” (more)